More To Life Then Cheap Drinks

Recently I moved to London, and since being here I have made plenty of new friends. All of them really are great, but the thing about new friends is that they just don’t know you the same as older friends. They don’t know your past, they don’t know your morals, they don’t know what you stand for. Not to the same extent as others which you have know for a lot longer do anyway.

Anyone who does know me knows I like to party. All you have to do is have a quick click through my Facebook photos to see, but lately I have toned it down a bit. Why? To save money. My favourite people to party with are living in other countries. Maybe I just don’t feel like it anymore. To me, there just seems to be more to life then going out on the weekend, getting fucked up, then working hungover the next day.

Now this, is what you call hungover.

To some people though, they see things differently then to me. To them, this is what living life is about, and that’s fine, but I don’t really need them telling me this. “Oh but Clare, you’re not living life if you’re not out having fun!” This is usually said by ‘new friends’. Friends who know that I travel, but not every detail of everywhere I have been. It’s also quite ironic, and can be either a little funny, or quite annoying. They don’t know that I’ve been to Ibiza. Or the two weeks in Bali during Schoolies. Nor do they know that I spent three of the craziest weeks in South East Asia. Have they ever given rice Monks at 5am, in a small Laos town while still drunk? Got up on the bar and drank from the bottle in Cusco, then started serving drinks from behind the bar? Passed out in an airport check-in line, then check-ined merely by showing my arm which had my flight number and name written on it? Partied on the Vang Vieng River? And don’t even get me started on the time in Thailand when we went to a bar called Sperm, and in one night had one guy hospitalised due to dehydration, another threw his only pair of shoes away when a ladyboy prostitute tried to get him on his/her motorbike, and another guy we lost for 12 hours because he ran into a rice field, due to the fact that he thought the Viet Cong were after him, and ended up at a remote hill tribe. Now, I’m not saying I’m necessarily proud of all these, but they are undoubtedly better drinking stories then, “We went to the Ivy, got in a fight with the bouncer, then ended up in Oxford Street KFC at 4am. It was the craziest night ever!”

Even more then just the drinking stories, what are you going to remember more; that one Friday night you went out and had the ‘best night ever’, or the morning you got up at 3am and saw sunrise over Angkor Wat? Or the two days you spent cruising down The Mekong Delta? Or when you struggled to climb that mountain at 14,000 feet, only to get to the top and be in awe of the view which lay out in front of you?

So those people can go out every night, and pay a 20 quid cover charge, and drink and ‘live life’ the way they want to, but I am perfectly happy with where I’ve been and what I’ve seen.

Though, if you need further convincing that I don’t mind a sneaky shot (or 2) every now and again…Fine, here you go. And remember guys, always drink responsibly.

2 responses to “More To Life Then Cheap Drinks”

I loved these stories! I have some crazy stories along
These lines about travels overseas and here that
Include some pretty awesome drinking moments.
When I started making new friends a few years ago
I realized they had NO idea who I was or how much
Frankly I was badass than thier little stories about
Drinking at the local bar and then hitting up
Waffle House afterwards. But, I also learned those things
That had held me back I no longer had to be that person
And I could be whoever I wanted. It was a nice fresh start
When I really needed one.